Washington Square Outdoor Art Exhibit

1 University Pl, New York, NY 10003

Online

Website

Telephone

(212) 982-6255

Description

This twice-yearly street fair showcases fine artists and craft artisans from around the New York metropolitan area, the nation and the world for two weekends around Memorial Day and two weekends around Labor Day. Attendees come from all over and are a cosmopolitan mix, including art lovers, tourists, faculty and students from the area's many schools and professionals such as interior designers. The fair runs along Washington Square's east side and north along University Place to East 12th St.

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Did you know?

One balmy spring day in 1931, in the heart of the depression. Jackson Pollock, desperately in need of funds to pay the rent on his Greenwich Village studio that also served as his home, took a few of his iconoclastic paintings down several flights of stairs and set them up on the sidewalk near Washington Square Park. His friend and fellow Village artist, Willem DeKooning, in equally desparate financial straits, soon joined him. Their enterprise was noted by some public-spirited citizens, including such luminaries of the art world as Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, founder of the Whitney Museum of Art, and Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Director of the Museum of Modern Art, who organized the first Outdoor Art Fair.